Date

Call for Papers
State of the Cryosphere
European Geophysical Union General Assembly
13-18 April 2008
Vienna, Austria

Abstract Submission Deadline: Monday, 14 January 2008

For further information, please go to:
http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2008/


Papers are invited for "State of the Cryosphere" (session CR2) to be
convened at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly on 13-18
April 2008, in Vienna, Austria.

Session Description:
In the last decade major advances have taken place in our ability to
monitor and model various components of the cryosphere. NASA launched
its first dedicated cryospheric mission, ICESat, in 2002, while ESA
continues to operate ERS-2 and Envisat and is planning to launch CryoSat
II in 2009. In 2006 JAXA launched a new interferometric SAR mission,
ALOS PALSAR, and in 2007 DLR put up TerraSAR-X, the first 1 m resolution
civilian SAR. ICESat and GRACE have provided new insights into
variations in ice mass over the planet and the more recent missions
promise to do the same. Coordinated international programs such as the
Glacier Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) initiative are now
delivering information on glacier variations around the world, and ESA
has initiated projects with similar scope for land and sea ice. In
addition, IPY began in March 2007 and the first results from coordinated
satellite and field-based campaigns are beginning to emerge. Perhaps for
the first time, many critical aspects of cryospheric research are
starting to become data-rich, providing unprecedented challenges and
tests for numerical models of these systems. During the same time
period, dramatic and significant changes in behavior of ice sheet,
glacier, sea ice and permafrost regions coincident with a near doubling
of the rate of sea level rise compared with the mean of the Twentieth
Century have been witnessed.

The aim of this session is to bring together the latest observations of
ice sheet, glacier, and sea ice changes, and a comparison of these
observations with the most up-to-date modeling studies that attempt to
capture the current state of land ice, sea ice, and permafrost, and
predict what the coming century is going to look like. The session will
include overarching topical solicited reviews on each of these
components.

Conveners: Jonathan Bamber, Eric Rignot, and Andy Kaab

For further information and to submit an abstract, please go to:
http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2008/